


Senses

by Ghelik



Series: The 100 Fics [12]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Abby Being an Asshole, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bellamy Blake & Lexa Friendship, Blind Character, Blindness, F/M, Major Character Injury, Minor Octavia Blake/Lincoln, Past Finn Collins/Raven Reyes, Permanent Injury, Season/Series 01, for once, no murphy, unbetad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-07 23:54:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8821288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghelik/pseuds/Ghelik
Summary: This isn't what Abby expected. She isn't sure what she had expected, but this loyalty to a teenage would-be murderer, this compliance is not it.It is clear that the children of this camp are in dire need of saving. Good thing that the Ark is here now.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Did "a few" - and by 'a few' I mean a shit-load - of edits.

The first thing Abby notices as they enter the camp is how neat it is. She had expected… Well, she isn’t sure what she had expected but it’s most definitely not straight clear paths, things properly stored and kept, tents and smallish hut-like structures in clean lines built in a circle around a big square.

It’s hard to believe that a hundred teenaged boys and girls would accomplish something like this when even in the cramped space up in the Ark Abby couldn’t get Clarke to tidy up her small room.

  
Abby and Kane are the only ones of their group the kids have let into the walls of their settlement and have been escorted into the main square by grim-faced teens armed with knives, automatic rifles, and spears. A few minutes ago one of them- Miller’s kid, she thinks – disappeared into the hunky metallic shape of the dropship that occupies the northern face of the square and has yet to come back, presumably with Clarke. 

 

In charge, he left a young girl with a scar on her brow and braided. On her belt, a radio keeps buzzing up to life with quick whispered code. There are knives strapped to her torso beneath her patched up jacket, hidden, but easy to reach. The rest of the kids watch the adults warily, weapons ready but -thankfully - not raised.

  
Abby can only imagine the horrors they’ve encountered since they lost touch with them over six months ago. The last thing Abby heard from her daughter was that they were being picked off one by one by the murderous savages who inhabited the ground. It’s a miracle they’re still alive that they managed to build this little camp and keep the nasty grounders out. 

  
The doctor relaxes her shoulders, smiling kindly at the kids around them like she would a jittery patient. They can be at ease now: the rest of the Ark is here and will be taking care of things. Their plight has finally come to an end. They needn’t be grownups anymore.

  
Clarke appears at the dropship door dressed in jeans and a linen shirt, a big knife strapped to her thigh. There are beads in her messily braided hair; a feather hangs near her ear.

  
Abby’s heart swells when she sees her. She wants nothing more than to run to her and take her baby in her arms. Hold her and never let go. She takes a step forward, but one of the boys raises his rifle menacingly. 

 

Kane pulls her back by her arm.

  
"That is my daughter," she growls, glaring at the council member.

  
He nods and says in that very reasonable voice that she hates with a passion: "Let her come to us."

Abby wants to protest, but here Clarke comes, walking with quick, purposeful strides. She does give Abby a perfunctory hug, but steps immediately back to turn to the girl with the braids and the scar on her brow. "Monroe?"

 

"Ten outside the doors. They haven’t tried anything yet. They had a gun, two scalpels, and a shocking-baton each. We confiscated their weapons before letting them in."

  
Clarke nods, grim, her eyes steely fixed on Abby and Kane. 

 

This is all a show, the doctor notices, a charade for the adults benefit, to demonstrate how these teens answer to her like a well-oiled machine. 

The doctor wants to tell Clarke this is not necessary; she doesn’t need to be a leader anymore, the Ark is here; but bites her tongue. For a seamless transition, the best course of action is to let them know they respect their efforts. The children must be wary of everyone after so many months under the threat of the outsiders.

  
Abby was never happy about her daughter's imprisonment, but she is glad the kids had her. At least like this, she can be sure they had a good leader, someone capable and smart to take care of everything.

  
"Any news from the scouts?"

  
"At least two hundred alive ‘round the crash sites. They’re gathering to Alpha Station. Their coms keep jamming, but they managed to give the coordinates."

  
Clarke nods again.

  
"They’re walking through trikru territory?"

  
"We are nudging them in the right direction. Our boosters are safe, and we have set them to heighten ark’s signal."

  
"Better to have them all in the same place," muses Clarke and Monroe gives her a roughish smile.

  
Miller’s boy joins the two girls at a jog, and Clarke turns immediately to him. "Any news from our rider?"

  
"Octavia hasn’t radioed back yet."

  
Clarke smiles, a tight press of her lips with a quick upturn of the corners.

  
"Good, we'll take this from here" and speaks up for them all to hear. "Make sure the Arkers don’t make a mess. Raven will help with the coms.  Miller and Monroe are in charge of logistics." To these two she adds "Inform us if there’s any change."

  
"Sure thing." Miller gives a goofy salute, while Monroe shoulders her rifle with a grave "Aye, aye, cap."

  
The teenagers start to walk away, but a voice stops them in their tracks:

"No direct contact with the Arkers until we have established a working arrangement. The doors will remain closed for the moment."

  
Abby hadn’t even noticed the man standing at her daughters’ side, and it takes her a moment to recognize him, mainly because he’s blindfolded and she wasn’t that familiar with his face in the first place. But this… This is Jaha’s would-be assassin: Bellamy Blake.

  
He stands tall, thumbs hooked on his belt loops, lips pressed together, hair falling messily over the top of the white blindfold. He’s dressed in loose cargo pants that are too big for him and a threadbare blue shirt, which definitely isn't; a small ax strapped to his thigh. "We don’t want Trikru getting any ideas."

  
"I’ll inform the scouts." Monroe nods unclipping the small radio from her belt and barking code into it as the rest of the teens leave Kane and Abby with Clarke and Bellamy.

  
Clarkes’ smile is strained at best.

  
"Come. Let's talk inside."

  
Bellamy walks next to Clarke back to the dropship, his steps long, slow and purposeful, one for every two of the blonde. That synchrony bothers Abby. It feels strange to watch them moving as if they’re one entity like she’s peeking into something intimate and private.

  
At her side, Kane seems unaffected and just watches everything with his big fascinated child-like wonder. That bothers her, too. The impression that she will be alone in this, that Kane has already accepted whatever _this_ is.

  
The inside of the metal ship is as tidy as the exterior.

  
Clarke guides them through the med-bay in the lowest level and up the stairs into the second floor. They made an office of sorts with a model of the camp and the woods surrounding them built on a table to the left and pictures hanging from the walls, falling off a table to the right. The room is dimly lit by candles sticking to different surfaces

 

A small round desk with a collection of random chair around it dominates the center of the room in an unsettling parody of the council table back at the Ark.

 

Bellamy wanders around it, brushing his fingers lightly on the backrests of the chairs until he finds one to Clarke’s left. He plops carelessly down and turns his head defiantly in the general direction of the two adults.

 

Clarke folds her hands on the tabletop and, in a mockery of calmness, the man puts an arm on the back of her chair. The doctor sees the possessive gesture for what it is and feels her hackles rising. It takes a lot of self-restraint not to comment on it.

 

The most important thing right now is the transition, getting all these children back to their families. 

  
"Please," grumbles Bellamy Blake like he owns the place "take a seat."

  
The light illuminates only a part of the table, gleaming on Clarke’s hair and giving a creepy highlight to the white of the blindfold and it suddenly dawns on Abby:

 

This neatness, this order, it’s all for him. If she looks around the room she can see which parts belong to Clarke: all candles sticking to random places, papers hanging off the walls and pencils rolling around on messy surfaces, just like she used to keep the minuscule desk in her tiny room in the Ark.

 

And which belong to him: neat stacks, and straight lines. The outside is just the same: clean lines everywhere where he might go. 

 

The kids have organized their camp around the needs of one blind man.

  
Why on Earth would they do something like that? What sort of sway can this… lowlife delinquent have over the rest when they have a respected member of their society as their leader? What kind of terror must he have instilled in them?

  
Abby remembers that Wells was sent to the ground, too. He died before the communications between the hundred, and the Ark could be established. The story of how he died is fractured pieces: a girl slitting Wells' throat, a boy wrongfully accused; a banishment. 

 

The doctor can't help but ask how much of that story is true. How much just a farce to protect the real assassin. She knows Blake is capable of shooting innocent people. He had already tried to kill Thelonious. What was there to stop him from finishing the job with Jaha's son? Are the kids afraid of opposing this murderer?

  
It takes her a moment to realize that Kane is talking with his very reasonable voice. She shakes herself. This is important. They’re here for the kids after all.

Abby and Kane need to make sure Clarke understands that they’re here to do good and it’s in everyone’s best interest that the transition goes smoothly. These children have suffered enough and being dragged into an ego war will only add to the trauma.

  
"We only want everyone to go back home," Kane is saying, and Bellamy snorts, loud, disrespectful and obnoxious.

  
"What is that supposed to mean?" asks Clarke, her narrowed eyes look nearly black in the dim candlelight.

  
"This soldier game you’re playing... You don’t have to do that anymore. You are not alone."

  
"We never were," rumbles Bellamy, his voice vibrating with deep barely contained anger. He licks his lips. "The question here is: what can you offer us in return?"

  
Abby is not comfortable with this man here: what could he possibly know about politics, about what it truly means to lead? He is low-life factory station, a would-be peacekeeper, a janitor with no clue what he’s doing, and a dangerous criminal to boot. He shouldn’t be here. Nobody should have allowed him anywhere near a position of responsibility.

 

"Can you excuse us? This is a private discussion we need to be having with Clarke," she tells him firmly like she would any other underling.

  
"Bellamy and I lead together," states Clarke matter-of-factly, leaning back into her chair so that her shoulders rest against his arm. Abby can’t be sure with the dim light, but it looks like he is rubbing her arm with his thumb. What has he done to her daughter? "We represent the delinquents," she looks at him with a soft smile. "Together."

  
"Whatever it is you need to tell us we will decide what is best for our people. And should it threaten us, or our treaties with the grounders…" He lets the sentence hanging like an obvious threat. If he thinks the adults are going to cower in the face of a teenaged bully, he’s in for a big surprise.

  
"You have treaties with the grounders?" Kane sounds as confused as Abby feels.

  
The last thing they heard was that the grounders were killing them.

  
"We paid blood with blood to make peace with trikru," explains Clarke with a clipped voice."Le-Heda surveyed most of the process. We were granted a small territory to hunt and plant, and we have started trading."

  
"What do you mean 'you paid blood with blood'?" asks Abby, her heart in her throat. What has her daughter done?

  
Bellamy chuckles.

  
"The flares we sent to prevent the culling killed a lot of people. We paid the blood debt with a sacrifice of our own."

  
Clarkes’ hand lands on Bellamy’s thigh. She’s staring them down, daring them to ask. Kane watches them open-mouthed, and Abby has to repress the urge to puke.

  
No… This… This can’t be.

  
"You… You made a human sacrifice?"

  
"We did what was necessary" Clarke’s eyes are fierce, nearly glowing in the candlelight. Abby's mind is reeling. Clarke must know this is not right or she would just speak of it. Dear God, what has she done? "To keep our people safe and secure us allies among the trikru and a place in Heda’s coalition. Should our settlement be challenged, Heda and trikru would come to our aid. The same applies the other way around."

  
Abby swallows a lump in her throat.

  
"You mean you would turn on us if this trikru were to attack us?"

 

"We would have to offer soldiers if you were to declare war on them," explains Bellamy "They would ask us to give them forty warriors. As you have seen, that is nearly half our population. We would prefer if you refrained of declaring any wars."

  
"We thought you were at war _with_ this people," says Kane slowly, there is a small frown on his brow, and his eyes keep jumping from Clarke to Bellamy.

  
"Our relationship with the grounders is good now." Clarke’s hand is still on Bellamy’s thigh and its making Abby extremely uncomfortable. "We even secured a place in their coalition as the thirteenth clan." They both pull their sleeves up to reveal a brown brand on the inside of their forearm. "Heda is the Commander of the coalition. She lives in Polis that is a day and a half track from here. We called for a meeting with her and the trikru commander when the Ark fell."

  
"They set any offense with death," continues Bellamy in a threatening tone Abby doesn’t like at all. "You might want to tell your people not to engage with the grounders until you have met with the proper authorities."

  
"You mean this Heda?" asks Kane, still with his calm and collected tone. How can he be taking this all so calmly when everything Abby wants to do is throttle this man?

  
The rest of the meeting is enlightening. Abby can’t stop looking at her daughter, listening to her talk, watching her move. Everything she does and says… It’s like she’s an entirely different person. Where did the little girl who liked to paint on the walls and wear pigtails go?

  
As for the man at her side. He’s cocky and sassy and disrespectful to a fault, butting into the conversation whenever he pleases in an odd combination of threatening and overprotectiveness.

  
"It would be best if you all came back with us," tries Abby, fighting the urge to impose her will on her daughter and be done with it.

  
Kane is the one leading what is apparently a negotiation. Abby doesn’t want to negotiate. These children should be with their families. That’s where they belong, not here, not lost in the woods under the tyrannical rule of a maniac.

  
"We will not abandon our land," says Bellamy, his hand once more on Clarke's backrest.

 

"We have to think about what is best for our people," adds Clarke, like these hundred delinquents are somehow not part of the Ark; like the people of the Ark, not her people.

  
The doctor wants to argue, to ask the peacekeepers outside the walls to throw the girl over their shoulders and drag her back to where she will be safe.

 

Kane nods. "Of course." And what the hell is he doing?

 

"It will be best if you sent someone back immediately to Alpha Station to inform the Arkers not to engage with the grounders. To keep to themselves as much as possible until you return," says Clarke at last. "We offer  one of our scouts to escort them back."

  
"Also a map and some supplies," adds Bellamy grimly. "As long as no one tries to cross the Mount River, the grounders will leave you be."

  
"Thank you," Kane smiles, the traitor. "That is very considerate."

  
"The rest of you are welcome to bunk in the mess hall. You will be given shelter and food until Heda arrives. As long as you surrender all your weapons, that is."

  
"Only skaikru can carry arms inside Dropship," Bellamy’s tone makes it obvious that this is non-negotiable.

  
Abby and Kane are escorted back to the doors to explain everything to the wary arkers outside and send their envoy with one itchy-looking Monroe back to Alpha Station. The rest surrender all their weapons and are patted down by the teenagers before being let into the settlement.

  
Miller’s boy, Nate Abby remembers, seems to be in charge of all the soldiering going on. She remembers the day they caught the Captain of the Peacekeepers shoplifting at the Exchange. His father was so disappointed he wasn’t even able to look him in the eye. The boy had seemed scruffy and lanky as a fourteen-year-old. Now he walks with ease, shoulders are thrown back and an easy smile in his eyes if not his lips.

  
Abby notices the stranger with the tattoos as she and the rest are entering a long, low wooden hut everyone calls the mess-hall. He’s young like the rest of the kids, with shoulder-length dark red hair and a scar on the side of his throat, dressed in a garb of leather and coarse-looking wool.

  
Miller notices her watching and smiles crookedly at her. "That’s Luka kom Trikru. Our hostage," and snorts like it’s some sort of an inside joke. Like it's funny they have a hostage.

  
Abby feels her knees go weak.  
The disappointments keep adding up.

  
She hurries after the group into the mess-hall. A group of around fifteen children run around bringing freshly cut wood for the fire, cooking flesh, boiling water or setting the tables and benches stacked against the walls. The middle of the wooden structure dominated by a big rectangular fire pit – and if that isn’t a fire-hazard that makes her skin itch, Abby doesn’t know what is – which heats the whole room and makes it a little bit stuffy. Dark smoke curls around the wooden beams holding up the roof and flows up through small windows opened into it.

  
Most of the Arkers are mesmerized watching the fire, and it’s not like Abby can fault them. Up in the Ark, fire was something to be feared, something that could never be allowed to happen, not with air being in short supply and living in a metal box floating around the sky. Most of them have probably never even seen fire before. The upper classes were taught about it at school and even were allowed to light a candle once in a controlled environment. 

One young girl with dark blond hair smiles at them and herds them slowly towards the back where they’re given plates and flesh, and then directs them towards one of the tables the children have set up.

  
At her side, Kane grunts something about this being the best food he’s ever had.

  
Abby ignores the meat and small vegetables, watching the kids. They seem so carefree. Joking with each other, gathering in groups, siting on awkward benches around tables, laughing, talking and discussing stuff like there’s nothing wrong with the world. The doctor searches the crowd, trying to remember the faces and names she spent weeks staring at before the communications with the children went down. She’s trying to remember which ones had died before that, which one is missing from the picture.

  
Clarke and Bellamy aren’t here yet, and a part of her is glad because it means she doesn’t have to see what her beautiful daughter has become. How could she? A blood sacrifice? She cannot wrap her head around that.

  
Her daughter –  the girl she has nurtured and raised and loved– would never do something like that. Clarke is good; she was training to become a doctor herself and, even though she hasn’t yet made the Doctor’s Vow, Abby knows, in her heart, that her Clarke would never sacrifice a child. She would die protecting these kids. She has the spirit of an artist, for God’s sake!

  
So it’s clear who is at fault here.

  
When Clarke and Bellamy enter the mess hall, there is a noticeable shift. But not the one of repressed terror and fear one would expect to follow the arrival of a tyrant. Instead, the kids greet them with open arms, claps to the back and short conversations.

  
Or, maybe, it’s just status reports. Maybe this cheeriness is forced to avoid dire consequences. Bellamy did banish a kid, is responsible for the death of Jaha’s son – Abby doesn’t yet know how, but she’s sure it’s his fault, too. It has to be.

  
Abby watches them and feels anger seething through her veins.

  
How dare he? How dare he corrupt her beautiful daughter like this? Because the blood sacrifice was obviously his call. How could Clarke be so blind to that creep’s manipulation? Who thought it might be a good idea to send children without adult supervision to the ground? How could this dangerous criminal slip into the dropship to poison young influential minds? And how can people follow him? They must know what he has done. Is it fear? It must be fear. How else could they choose him over the unmistakably more prepared choice? Clarke is the daughter of two councilmembers; she was a medic in training, knows more politics than any of these children combined. How could they possibly not vote her as a sort of surrogate chancellor until the rest of the ark came down?

 

It would have made everything that much easier.

  
Clarke and Bellamy grab their food and sit at a table in the back of the room, strategically situated to oversee everything.

 

At least Clarke is still partly in charge. Once they meet with this Heda-person and the rest of the Ark’s survivors have settled, they can arrest this boy and be done with him.

  
"You are staring." Abby jumps a foot in the air and turns so quickly she nearly falls off the bench.

  
Raven Reyes is there, a smug smirk on her lips and hair pulled back into her trademark ponytail. Abby feels a rush of relief seeing her.

  
Automatically followed by a wave of unexpected anger towards the young mechanic. Why hasn’t she stopped them? How has she allowed her daughter to fall for the manipulations of this twisted criminal? Raven is older than the hundred; she should have stopped him. Then again, maybe she has been unable. Maybe, Raven, like Clarke, has fallen prey to the same manipulations.

  
"Oh, my God!" Abby hugs her tightly."How are you?"

The girl smiles and sits across from them.

  
This is good. They’re out of these supposed ‘leaders’ earshot, Raven will tell them what has been going on and they can start planning how to overthrow the tyrant and return the children to their parents.

  
"Pretty good. What about you? How do you like earth so far?"

  
"It’s all very… different," says Kane diplomatically and Raven snorts. She never was the diplomatic kind. Abby appreciates that about her.

  
"Tell us everything. What happened since we lost communications."

  
The doctor can’t help turning back towards her daughter, who’s currently leaning towards her co-leader, deer grease making her lips gleam. His hand is on her waist, thumb tracing circles absentmindedly on her skin where her shirt as ridden slightly up. Abby wants very much to cut that hand off.

  
Raven follows her stare and laughs again.  
"Well, for once, that happened." Abby doesn’t want even to think about what _that_ is. Her daughter is not stupid enough to fall for…. Blake. "Well, we lost communications during Unity Day."

Kane nods.

"Yes, there was a bomb on the ark."

  
Raven licks her lips.

  
"That was the same day Finn decided to set up a meeting with trikru’s commander, Anya."

  
Abby shudders.  
How long before they lost communications had that man started poisoning her daughter’s mind to choose some poor kid as a sacrificial lamb, turning Finn Collins’ valliant effort to make peace into a bloody joke?

Speaking of him… Where is that boy?

Oblivious to Abby’s dark musings Raven goes on:

"Finn tracked down a grounder we had…. encountered," Kane cocks his head at that and Raven blushes slightly. "It was Lincoln, the one that nearly stabbed him to death. Together they made an agreement for the leaders of our clans to meet. He wanted it to be only Clarke. But Bellamy refused to let her go alone."

Of course he did. He probably wanted to have some leverage in whatever accords they planed.

  
"He told Miller and me to follow them at a distance and cover them should it be a trap. The terms of the meeting where ‘no weapons’ and for the leader to come alone. Of course the terms where broken by both sides. But the grounders where jittery when they saw Clarke, Bellamy, Octavia and Finn there. The meeting was short. Finn told me that Anya accused us to start a war that we couldn’t win. Apparently our flares had burned a village to the ground. When Clarke tried to explain that we hadn’t meant it as an attack, that we didn’t know there was a village nearby and that we only wanted to make sure our people knew we were alive, they didn’t buy it. Bellamy asked if there was a way of making reparations. ' _Jus drein jus daun'_  is what they wanted." seeing Abby and Kane’s baffled expressions Raven shrugs "It’s grounder for 'blood must have blood' it’s what they live by. Believe me, you’ll end up being very familiar with the saying."

  
She licks her lips, looking extremely uncomfortable.

  
"It took a while to organize everything, Clarke and Bellamy where taken to TonDC, trikru capital a few miles up north, and then a week later taken to Polis to do our reparations. Then we started forging better relationships with the grounders. We did a 'hostage exchange'. Octavia has moved to TonDC and is in a sort of ‘political marriage’ with their healer" Raven's eyes flit quickly to the leader’s table and back."Even though we can’t say she’s married in Bellamy’s earshot or he flips." Raven’s smile is impish. "But it’s totally a marriage by now. Octavia loves that guy, she jumped at the possibility of moving with trikru. We got Luka in exchange."

  
Abby is loathe to ask, but the suspense is killing her. There is one boy she knows for a fact she hasn’t seen.

"What about Finn Collins?" Raven’s boyfriend for whom she risked her life… What thanks has he gotten for trying to broker peace?

  
"We sent Finn as a peace ambassador to Polis to keep everyone happy and informed. Heda is a bit of a control-freak, she likes having representatives of the thirteen clans close at hand as bargaining chips. We send messengers constantly to keep an eye on him. He seems happy."

  
Abby blinks. That… was not what she was expecting to hear. "And you didn’t go with him."

  
Raven squirms, her eyes don’t meet Abby's. Isn’t she allowed to leave? Are they keeping her like some sort of prisoner? It would make sense, having someone that can control their radios and tech closely watched, making sure she doesn’t side with the grounders to defeat him.

  
"Finn and I broke up," she says tersely. "It was…" she clears her throat. "It was best for everyone that he left on his own."

"For everyone or for him?"

  
Raven frowns.

 

"What exactly is your problem with Bellamy? He has sacrificed more than anybody else to keep us safe."

  
Abby does not roll her eyes… Much.

 

"Please."

  
Raven bristles visibly, raising, her hands braced on the table. "You don’t know jack of what we’ve had to do! What right do you have to come here and…"

  
"It was his eyes, wasn’t it?" Kane’s voice is soft and calm when he says it. Abby was about to interrupt Raven herself, and for a moment she can only gawk at the other council member. "The blood sacrifice you did was his eyes."

  
Abby looks at her daughter and that man and back at Raven, who has seated back down. The mechanic rolls her tongue over her teeth and looks down at her hands. She seems younger, more vulnerable.

"They wanted a death sacrifice. They wanted to give him ‘a death through a thousand cuts’, so that he would feel the deaths of everyone the flares had killed. Let’s just say it’s awful and painful as hell" she swallows."I wasn’t there but Clarke… she told me when they came back. He would have done it. He was perfectly ok with letting the grounders butcher him.  
Clarke managed to sweet-talk the Heda out of it. Asked for something in exchange. I don’t know how she managed to convince her. She says it’s because Heda is less war inclined than the rest. I don’t know. The thing is Heda intervened ‘in our favor,’" she sighs. "As long as he let Anya, as a representative of trikru’s spirit, do it, they would be satisfied leaving him ‘a useless stone’. That’s their term for blind people, because they cannot fight, or, you know, hunt or scavenge… For them blind people are nothing but stones around their families necks, dragging them down. It was done publicly in Polis. Clarke told me that Bellamy didn’t utter a sound throughout the process and it’s not like Anya was very delicate in cutting his eyes out. It took apparently over an hour," Raven shudders and forces a smile onto her lips. "I am very glad I didn’t need to see that."

  
Abby and Kane gape at her.

The mechanic shrugs again, her discomfort evident. "It took a while for things to go back to normal but he pulled through. And we follow where they lead." She licks her lips standing up. "They are good leaders, Abby. You have to give them some credit for that."

  
Raven leaves to join some other teens a few tables away.

Kane hums softly at her side.

"Are you satisfied?"

  
Abby stuffs a small potato into her mouth to avoid having to answer. No. She is not satisfied in the least.

 

*** 

 

"I would really appreciate it if your mother would stop staring at me," mumbles Bellamy into Clarke’s ear.

  
They are sitting at their usual table, while the Arkers all huddle together around Kane and Abby, creating a sort of natural barrier between both sets of leaders, which is fine by Clarke. She isn’t sure how she is supposed to act around her mother anymore.

  
It has only been six months since she last talked to her, but it feels like a lot longer and it doesn’t help that Abby keeps staring like she doesn’t recognize her. Which is probably fair, Clarke has changed quite a bit in the last few months. Well, sue her! Being in charge is hard and stressful and having her mother come and stare at everything with her critical eyes is really not how she was planning to spend the day.

  
Of course she’s glad Abby is here. For a long time, she thought she was dead and hasn’t believed otherwise until Miller came in this morning to tell her she was here. But one thing is wanting her mother alive, and another is to have her as an enemy. Having here watching and criticizing everything, wanting to tear everything Clarke and Bellamy have worked so hard to build down. She might be being selfish, but she doesn’t want to move back into the Ark. She doesn’t want her mother controlling her life again.

  
At her side, Bellamy keeps squirming, like he can physically feel Abby’s eyes on him. Given how his senses have heightened since he lost his eyes, he probably can. Clarke has stopped questioning his random blind-man-powers and just rolls with it. It has a lot of very nice advantages anyway.

  
"Well, they’re taking it all in," she tries for the diplomatic answer. His scoff is really unimpressed and Clarke has to bite her lip to keep from laughing in his face, a wicked idea forming in her mind. "Do you want me to make them stop looking?"

  
His smirk is adorable. She kisses him until someone – Jasper - shouts “get a room!” at them, which is how most of their more relaxed evenings tend to end anyway. So she can pretend everything is actually normal and she isn’t about to face a whole lot of new problems she totally doesn’t want to deal with. Bellamy licks the deer grease off her lips. His breath warm against her skin, sending goosebumps down her spine when he whispers in that low voice she loves:

"Lets get out of here."

 

***

 

It is early morning, three days after they arrived at the children’s camp and Abby is very much not ok with the situation as a whole. Kane, on the other hand, seems to be having the time of his life: constantly pestering the kids with questions on their different activities, trying his hand in them whenever he has the chance. He even needled Miller into letting him join one of the hunting expeditions on their second day until an exasperated Bellamy ordered the teen to take the councilman with him. The children must be under instructions to accommodate them as much as possible, because she really cannot understand why they would be so ready to patiently explain everything to the adults.

  
Abby is sitting near a group of fishers mending nets – these kids have somehow acquired the knowledge on how to repair and use nets, Kane says she should be amazed by this, but she’s mostly sulking by now.

"Heda’s riders’ have been spotted crossing the outer border!" shouts one of the kids, Fox, she thinks it is, rushing over to Bellamy and Clarke’s tent.

  
Abby is also very much not OK with her eighteen-year-old daughter living with some would-be murderer and she has made herself abundantly clear. But it’s obvious that Clarke is doing everything in her power to incommode Abby as much as humanly possible, so there is the slight possibility that Clarke doesn’t usually live with her co-leader and is doing it now only for a show.

  
The two leaders rush out, barking orders and going their separate ways like two perfectly coordinated dancers performing very complicated filigrees. There’s a constant blabber from the radios strapped to their belts. It’s so much information from so many voices she isn’t sure how they can keep it all straight.

  
The closer the riders get, the more disarray seems to reign at camp and a very petty part of Abby is very glad that the control they have over the camp is so obviously slipping. This will show Clarke how desperately she needs the presence of the Ark, of the council, the Chancellor and her mother.

  
And then, Bellamy’s voice cut’s through the rising chaos like a hot knife through butter – not that there had been any butter on the Ark for ninety years.

  
"Everyone back to work!" he bellows and, surprisingly enough, it works. People stop milling excitedly about and turn to their tasks.

  
Ten minutes later the Heda and her men enter the camp.

  
The arkers’ only image of the grounders so far had been of the tow ‘hostages’ that had been exchanged against Finn Collins and Octavia Blake: savage looking people in coarse leather and skin clothing, with long braided hair and tribal tattoos shyly peaking out of their clothing. Nothing could have prepared Abby for the monstrous people that enter the children’s camp with long purposeful strides. Heda’s party is comprised of six giants with scary masks and black leather decorated with metallic accents. The Heda is a young girl – can’t be that much older than Clarke – with sun-tanned leathery skin of a person that has spent her whole life running around the woods – not that Abby can really imagine something like that other than in the most abstract of senses – severe poison-green eyes and a severe frown around her lips. She’s dressed in a long coat with a soft orange scarf draped loosely over her hair.

  
She doesn’t really look at anybody – much less Miller who is the one charged with escorting the party to where Clarke and Bellamy are standing in the main square- her eyes fixed straight ahead with the inborn arrogance of someone who knows she’s the most feared person in the room. Once she reaches the children’s leaders, she juts her chin defiantly out and rises her eyebrows.

  
"Why do I have that this is all your fault, Skystone?"

  
"Beats me, Commander."

  
For a moment they all stand there in silence and then the high commander of the thirteen clans snorts a very undignified and un-ladylike laugh and claps him on the back. She hugs Clarke and for a few moments the three leaders look like three perfectly normal friends, joking and catching up, while surrounded by big, muscle-packed warriors in intimidating garb and tattoos.

  
Clarke signals for Marcus and Abby to come nearer and introductions are made. Then they take the discussion back to the second floor of their dropship, where Clarke explains the situation quite calmly and, when an argument breaks between the Heda and her, Bellamy cuts smoothly in and, somehow, argues their case and they reach an understanding. No big decisions can be made without Anya, the leader of trikru, but Heda seems to be open to a peaceful solution.

  
Abby feels like she’s stepped into some sort of weird alternate universe where the rules have drastically changes, where she’s the child that needs guidance and learning, and her daughter is the mother, the chancellor and the teacher.  
It feels like years pass in the tiny room as they draft a few accords and Heda decides she’ll visit the sites of the fallen Ark pieces personally to determine what else needs to be done and who will accompany her back to Polis as a ‘hostage’ of Arkru.

  
Abby can’t help but notice how Heda keeps referring to the children as “Skaikru” and Abby’s people as “Arkru”.

"We will be happy to welcome the fourteenth clan into our coalition," says Heda and it is another clear distinction.  
For this girl who controls like a queen an amazingly big territory, the delinquents and their parents are two completely different clans: one made of people she trusts, led by people she can joke and have fun with – it hasn’t escaped Abby how she keeps looking at Clarke or how Bellamy will keep slipping her a flask or mumbling words in that strange language of the grounders. They even call her Lexa instead of Heda.

 

Heda and her men stay for a feast that evening. It is chilly, but they eat on the square anyway, around a huge bonfire and there’s loud music, singing and a weird dance that Abby cannot really understand. A big grounder with tattoos all over his face asks her to dance and only shrugs and takes Roma instead when she refuses. The children are having fun. Off to one side, closely watched by a bearded giant, Clarke, Lexa and Bellamy dance around in a very undignified and uncoordinated heap.

Abby finds herself smiling at the sight of them.

"Well, finally!" Kane seems a little bit more than tipsy by this point. "I thought that frown was stuck."

  
"Kane, you’re drunk."

  
"And you’re being judgmental and close-minded. Now that we have gotten over that, dance with me. I think I have finally gotten the hang of the steps."

  
Abby was not expecting to have fun, but she does. Even if the headache the next morning leaves her feeling like someone took a sledgehammer to her temple and her mouth tastes like something died in it.

  
Heda and her people are getting ready to leave.

"I look forward to seeing you at the spring festival," is saying Lexa when Abby finally manages to convince her body to move towards the rest of the gathered people.

  
They load the supplies the kids have offered into their backpacks and start filing out of Dropship.

Abby looks back at the children working and smiles at Clarke.

"Are you sure you don’t want to come back home with us?"

  
"This is home," and if she’s looking at the camp or at Bellamy, Abby isn’t sure.

She sighs.

"You have done good," says Abby and Clarke smiles, tired and older than she has ever seen her. But happier, too and it leaves a bittersweet aftertaste in her mouth to know that Clarke has found happiness without her, that she doesn’t need her mother anymore.

  
"We try."

**Author's Note:**

> This was unbetaed. As always, thank you for reading  
> Would someone be interested in a few more chapters in this universe? I am thinking about developing a short series for this alternate universe, is that something you would like to read?


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